Chapter 2
Jeff buys the Nissan after Coming Back from Germany in 1994
Here's a dumb ass thing I did. For whatever reason, I don't know what possessed me to do it to this day; as soon as I got back to San Antonio Texas in April, 1994 from Germany l, I decided to buy this old Nissan Maxima that had 103,000 miles on it. I found the ad in the San Antonio Express News classifieds section; called up the person and I bought the car. Basically without ever getting it mechanically checked or anything like that, I think I paid about $3,200 for the car.
I still had these visions I was going to get my big malpractice settlement because this Doctor at the Landstahl Army Hospital had lost my lab results and when he operated on me for prostate cancer and he removed my prostrate, he caused me to receive two additional hernia operations and a lot of pain.
The first thing I had done when I came back was by a motorcycle. I had vowed I was going to get the motorcycle of my dreams that I never had before in my life and even though I am in my middle 40s, I didn't care and I immediately went out to the local Yamaha motorcycle shop and bought a beautiful Yamaha Virago 750cc motorcycle that I enjoyed for many, many years. I even talked my friend John who took me over there in his car to buy at the smaller 500cc Yamaha Virago and for couple months while my wife and daughter was still in Germany, I had the greatest time running around the hill country of San Antonio on our motorcycles. We had a great time.
Unfortunately my wife did not wind up driving the Nissan Maxima and I wound up driving the Nissan Maxima. My wife talked me into buying her a nice Ford Explorer that was the worst cornering vehicle I ever drove in my life. The least little bit of water on the road and you felt the thing was gonna tip over on its side but I didn't get to drive it much.
Of course, you buy a car with 103,000 miles on it and you haven't gotten a mechanical inspection, suddenly things start breaking and you need repairs. I made the mistake of bringing it to this little hole in the wall garage on Thousand Oaks near 281 that was run by some very nice mechanics right next to this big huge high-rise Frost office building. Frost Bank hated that little hole in the wall slum-looking repair facility that was just merely a bunch of garage doors that would open or close. It always had a bunch of junked vehicles in the parking lot right in front of it which was right next to the Frost Bank building.
The mechanics were very nice but at one point I brought my car in there and I swear to God, my car sat there for four months during the winter without being repaired. It became a running joke; I would go over there every week or two and the guy was real nice but always came up with some excuse why my car wasn’t repaired. I can't remember what was wrong with it; something or other with the engine but he could never get it repaired.
So naturally I drove my motorcycle to work which was a good 13 miles and back. Then I was stupid enough to ride that motorcycle on the highway, our local highway 281 on my way to work. I still remember one time when I was driving home from work and I almost got to my exit off of highway 281 when I hear this noise and I looked behind me and find that my rear license plate had blown off my motorcycle and fallen on the highway. I wasn't going to go back and pick it up. I guess I just didn't check the tightness the license plate screws enough. The bike vibrates a lot so the license plate and screws basically vibrated right off the motorcycle; after that I checked the nuts every now and then to see if there was still tight.
So I had to drive my motorcycle all winter that year and for once I did get lucky because that was one of the warmest winters on record and I didn't have to suffer from extreme cold that I would've had to suffer with most other places in the country but I was in San Antonio so I got lucky this time. But that doesn't mean I didn't get wiped out by the weather now and then. I had saddlebags on my motorcycle and did have a raincoat in a slicker kind of thing I could put on and I can tell you several times driving home; I was driving that motorcycle in the pouring rain and God was smiling on me because I never did lose control of the bike and have it you know go down with me on it even though I was driving in pouring rain. A motorcycle isn't the most stable thing in the world with two wheels so I did get lucky in that regard.
I remember nursing that Nissan Maxima for five years and for about the last two years or so I had no air conditioning which is awful in an oven of heat like San Antonio has so basically I tried to keep my windows down and of course not only did the car not have air conditioning but the radio didn't work either so I got to be miserable for several years in a crappy car that I never should've bought.
I finally sold it just before I went back to Germany after owning it for five years; I believe for like $800 and I was happy to get that. I did remember I had this great little Bowie knife I bought at a pawn shop when I got rid of this room heater unit. I had a basically traded the guy for this heater which I didn't room either I didn't need in San Antonio for this knife and naturally when I sold the car I forgot all about the Bowie knife I had stashed under the driver seat you until a day or two later and go oh poop, I lost my nice Bowie knife.